Chapter Text
“Hufflepuff!”
A light cheer from the students of the Great Hall, perhaps not as loud as it would have been had Harry Potter become a Gryffindor, but everyone loves a Hufflepuff.
Kind.
Loyal.
Trustworthy.
A Hufflepuff won’t betray you to get what they want, as a Slytherin or a particularly vicious Ravenclaw would. A Hufflepuff won’t talk over you or demonize you for something you think like a Gryffindor or a particularly self-righteous Ravenclaw would.
Indeed, Hufflepuffs were the friendliest house, which meant that Harry Potter would also be friendly and open and a great saviour! Sure, he wouldn’t be as brave as was expected, but you can’t fault that too much.
This line of thought flew through the minds of the Great Hall, but there was one problem with their line of thinking.
Harry Potter was nothing like they were assuming. He hadn’t gone to Hufflepuff because he thought he was an open person; he hid his every thought behind. a shy smile. He hadn’t gone to Hufflepuff because he was trustworthy; he believed any information that would help him survive in this new world of mysticism and magic should be collected through any means possible. He hadn’t gone to Hufflepuff because he was loyal; for anyone who could read his mind, his personality would be summed up as “would sell you out for a scrap of bacon.”
No, Harry Potter was a Hufflepuff because he knew the house's reputation and capitalized on it. He hadn’t been idle during that month before school started, after all…
***
“Get the mail, Dudley,” a gruff, unpleasant voice said from behind a large newspaper and a cup of coffee.
“Make Harry do it!”
“Get the mail Harry.”
“Make Dudley do it.”
“Poke him with your Smelting stick, Dudley.”
A meaty fist gripping a knobby oak-wood staff swung towards Harry from a chair at the kitchen table. Harry danced backwards, letting go of a frying pan full of cooking bacon, before making his way out of the kitchen, leaving the sizzling bacon to Aunt Petunia’s watchful beady eyes.
Exiting the house, Harry opened the mailbox, flipping through the letters in a bid to stay out of the house as long as possible. He moved one of aunt Petunia’s gardening magazine subscriptions (not that she ever did much of the gardening) to the back before he startled and almost dropped the whole stack. There was an envelope addressed to him!
Mr. H. Potter
The Cupboard Under the Stairs
Number 4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging, Surrey
Someone who knew that he stayed in a cupboard under the stairs too…
This required further investigation, so Harry stuffed the letter into the waistband of his too-large shorts (courtesy of Dudley) and returned to the kitchen. He placed the pile of letters, sans his own, onto the kitchen table, careful to stay out of range of Dudley’s Smelting Stick, before glancing towards the kitchen. Confirming that the Dursleys no longer needed him as the bacon had finished cooking, he just barely stopped himself from sprinting to his cupboard.
Instead, he walked quickly to the cupboard. Closing the door just slow enough not to make too much noise but not so quiet that the Durselys wouldn’t hear it and think he was up to something.
As soon as the door was closed, he ripped open the letter, reading it with the dim light of an old flashlight he nicked from the garbage can behind the school.
HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY
Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore
(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock,
Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)
Dear Mr. Potter,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.
Term begins on 1 September. We await your owl by no later than 31 July.
Yours sincerely,
Minerva McGonagall
Deputy Headmistress
Hogwarts? Owl? Mugwump? What did this all mean?
Harry’s heart was racing, and he knew he just needed to calm himself down and think it through.
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy. What an odd name for a school, though he supposed it wasn’t any odder than Smeltings. But the second part-”Witchcraft and Wizardry?”
Harry thinks back to any books he had been able to read from the pile of old books that the public library gave away every so often. He couldn’t go into the library since they didn’t trust him; they had all heard Aunt Petunia’s “tales,” after all. But that pile was being given away for free, so they left it outside and unwatched.
He vaguely recollects one book on the history of Britain, an old one about ancient myths. In the story of King Arthur, there was a wizard, Marlin, maybe? No, that was a city somewhere.
Well, whatever the name was, this old wizard dude did magic, so maybe “Wizardry” is just a weird word for magic? And if Harry was getting an invitation, that would certainly explain all of the weird stuff he’s done and had no explanation for.
Like the time he turned a teacher who laughed at him’s hair blue. Or when he appeared at the top of the school building after Dudley’s gang had cornered him.
So this must be a school for magic people! And he got an invitation! That meant that maybe he could learn to do better magic and be able to protect himself from everyone better! Harry wasn’t sure what magic could do, but if he could learn to disappear and reappear at a different location, it was definitely worth a shot!
Now how to reply to them?
It said “owl.”
Where was he going to get an owl?
Maybe it was a code like spies used in the TV shows Harry never got to watch but that Dudley loved. Harry’s cousin and his gang pretended to be a spy with “secret codes” during Harry Hunting a lot.
Harry decided to put that aside and check out the “enclosed list of necessary books and equipment” and found books describing many words he’d never heard of before and many silly names.
Herbology? Transfiguration? He knows the word herb from Aunt Petunia, always yelling about protecting them while he’s gardening, so maybe Herbology has something to do with gardening?
“Well,” Harry whispers to himself, “nothing much I can do about this.” Before folding the list back up and placing it back inside the main envelope.
He then takes the full envelope, both list and letter inside, and slides it sideways into a small pocket that had come off from the wall with all of Dudley’s jumping on the stairs above his head. The letter fit snugly into it, although Harry had had to remove some of the emergency snacks to make it fit.
***
Dudley’s birthday came and went without much fanfare, along with the next couple of days, and every one of those days, Harry would open his letter again. Rereading it to try and find something, anything, that he’d missed and would make the whole puzzle fit cleanly together.
But after three days, he’d gleaned nothing new from the mangle of odd words and ridiculous titles.
With a failure on that front, Harry spent the week leading up to his birthday attempting the “wizardry” he’d done in the past. He wanted to try something smaller than teleporting or changing something’s colour, and the letter had mentioned a lot of different types of “wizardry.” Hence, he decided to try making light first. It seemed convenient for reading any of the books he could steal from Dudely (he still hadn’t noticed, and Harry’s stolen over 23 at this point) and was something he could easily imagine. He thought being able to think of what he wanted must be a component since he was always wishing he could do the thing he ended up doing.
To say that his first few attempts were unsuccessful would be an understatement; he fainted every time he tried and had a headache for the next hour after he woke up again. After trying the same thing a couple of times to receive those results, Harry had two theories;
A. He had no idea what he was doing, and he was probably going about it all wrong, so he wouldn’t ever be able to do “wizardry” until someone taught him.
Or
B. He needed to test out different styles of light; right now, he was going with a ball of white that he could read from, but maybe the colour, size, or brightness mattered.
A seemed the most likely, but it was also one he didn’t want to think about. It meant that he was stuck here, and since he didn’t know what an “owl” referred to, he would be unable to do anything about it.
However, B was what he hoped for, so Harry began experimenting. First, he tried changing the size; growing it, he found, knocked him out for longer and gave him a worse headache. Shrinking it seemed to give him lighter headaches and only knocked him out for 10 minutes when he tried a light the size of a needle!
He next decided that trying colour would be next. Harry remembered that in science class, they talked about how white light was a mixture of all colours, so maybe changing it to be one would take less strain.
This turned out to be correct… maybe. It didn’t seem to make much of a difference, he did get lighter headaches when he woke up, but that might have been from practice or just getting used to the pain.
Finally, Harry attempted to change the brightness of the light, and it worked magnificently! A small blue ball of light giving off only the faintest of light came to be in the palm of Harry’s hand.
And he felt euphoric! It was real! He, Harry! Could do it!
It was the evening of July 30th when he successfully made his first ball of light, and over the rest of that evening, he could change it to a slightly larger white light that he could use for reading if he really squinted.
***
Finally, the day the letter mentioned as the last day came and went; it was also Harry’s birthday, but the Durselys didn’t care about it, and Harry wasn’t sure why he should either, he didn’t have any friends to celebrate it with.
However, a loud knock sounded on the front door just after midnight. A booming knock, the kind you would assume was thunder if the whole house hadn’t vibrated from the force. Harry flinched back into his cupboard, hands gripping the ratty blanket, turning his knuckles white.
After a couple of seconds with no response, although Harry could hear the Durselys shuffling around in a panic, the knock sounded again. This time joined by a splintering crack and a deep voice saying, “oops, didn’ meant to do tha’!”
Harry slowly crept towards the cupboard door, doing his best to get a look at the voice’s origin. His hands still shook, after all, what kind of human could possibly make a crack like that happen “by accident?!”
“Sorry about yeh door, I’m comin’ in!” Through the crack in the door to the cupboard, Harry could see a giant of a man, broad-shouldered with a large bushy black beard. Behind him, the front door had a massive chunk of the middle ripped out of it and was placed to the side of the hallway. It had been torn off its hinges with the force of this terrifying man’s strength.
Above him, Harry could hear Vernon’s booming voice yelling down at the giant to get out of his house. A conversation filled Vernon’s incoherent yelling, and the giant’s bumbling apologies eventually led to why the giant was here; he was looking for Harry!
Ok, that did it. Harry pushed at the cupboard door in the spot that seemed to loosen the lock keeping him in and tumbled into the hall as the door fell open, and looked up at the giant.
“Harry?” Said the giant.
At that exact moment, Uncle Vernon came thundering down the stairs, bellowing about calling the police and not having any “freakish nonsense” in his house. The giant didn’t take being called a freak very well and started shouting back. Harry did his best to ignore them all until the giant (in a memory Harry would treasure forever) shouted Uncle Vernon into silence and finally gave Harry some explanations.
Some more shouting led to the giant, whose name was Hagrid, taking Harry away from the Durselys to go somewhere called “Diagon Alley,” where they’d sleep at the “Leaky Cauldron” until tomorrow morning when they’d buy stuff for the school Harry did actually get to go to!
Hagrid helped Harry collect all his stuff from the cupboard, looking like he was about to break down crying the entire time. The Durselys were glad to be rid of “the freak,” and Hagrid was going to talk to this “Dumbledore” about moving Harry to another house. (Wait, Dumbledore was the name on the letter to Hogwarts Harry got! Why does a headmaster have anything to do with where Harry lives?) Hagrid said something about creatures and not even most “house elves” having spaces this small.
***
Entering the Leaky Cauldron, Harry found himself in a dingy-looking bar crowded with people wearing the most bizarre outfits he’d ever seen: pointed hats, long flowing jacket-things, and, weirdest of all, sticks, one per person, worn wedged into one’s hair or tucked in a pocket or hanging from a belt in a fancy case.
The bartender, Tom, took one look at Harry, startled, and looked at Hagrid before turning back to Harry and saying, in the loudest whisper Harry had ever heard, “Harry Potter?”
Harry began to stammer back a greeting but was interrupted by the whole bar turning to look closer at him. He immediately shrank in on himself, clutching Hagrid’s massive cloak as he tried to escape the stares.
It made him feel like the starfish at the aquarium Dudley had had his birthday at one year, the one in the open tank that anyone could touch. The starfish had been the most colourful and all of Dudley’s friends, and of course, Dudley wanted to feel it all at once. Yes, the crowding of hands, the clamouring of voices, the human walls pressing in on all sides—This was what it must have been like for that starfish.
Luckily Hagrid was big enough that wading through the crowd, Harry practically hanging off of one arm, was no issue for the huge man. A short while later, and with a couple of coins that Harry hadn’t recognized thrown onto the counter in front of Tom, Harry and Hagrid were inside a room with a bed big enough for Hagrid to sleep on and even a bed for Harry!
That morning Harry awoke feeling remarkably comfortable. Too comfortable. He immediately sat up in bed, his hands scrabbling around the soft mattress to find his glasses.
Grabbing them and practically shoving them onto his face, Harry rapidly blinked as he looked around, trying to orient himself. As his vision came into focus, he saw the giant lying on his back on the bed next to him and the events of last night slammed into full focus.
He–he was free! He might have to go back, but for now, Hagrid had collected him from the Durselys, and Harry even got a bed and meals without having to work for them! Although he’d definitely be quadruple-checking the “not having to work for stuff” bit, everyone wanted something.
***
Hagrid woke up not long after Harry, and told him that he’d be taking him to Gringotts (a bank apparently) to get money from his vault (Harry had a vault?!) so he could buy stuff from Diagon while Hagrid was going to Dumbledore to talk about Harry’s “living conditions.”
After a “small” breakfast, according to Hagrid, and a feast according to Harry (that he didn’t have to pay for!) the two were off to the back of the Leaky Cauldron. Hagrid turned to Harry with an enthusiastic grin on his massive face. “Yer gonna love this ‘Arry!” Hagrid said, before tapping his pink umbrella on the brick wall in what looked like a very specific pattern.
Harry gaped as the brick wall seemed to fold in on itself, pieces sliding together until it opened up into a massive alleyway of evershifting colours. Iridescent bubbles floated in the air, people wearing clothing in every colour imaginable, and the stores filled with wonders Harry could never have imagined.
Hagrid led the way down the road, drawing some attention as he barreled through the busy cobbled street. Harry scrambled to keep up with him, not wishing to be washed away by the crowds. Staying right behind Hagrid felt like being in the eye of a hurricane, the crowds being the rushing wind attempting to hurl him off course.
The cobblestone street led straight until stopping at the base of a giant marble building, white columns reaching up, holding the multiple stories in an imposing manner.
Harry spied several smaller alleys branching off the main one and couldn’t wait to explore them: this was so much more interesting than Surrey's monotonous, right-angled streets! Hopefully, he could pick up some interesting magical things that were dropped on the ground where no one would miss them!
Finally, after what felt like an age, they arrived at the base of the steps up to the main doors of the giant white building at the end of the street, which turned out to be Gringotts, the magical bank.
The massive bronze double doors, easily twice Hagrid’s already imposing height, stood at the top of the steps, open wide for any visitors. A second pair of doors, silver this time, stood just inside the first, with a poem engraved in gold upon it that sent a shiver down Harry’s spine.
Enter, stranger, but take heed
Of what awaits the sin of greed,
For those who take, but do not earn,
Must pay most dearly in their turn,
So if you seek beneath our floors
A treasure that was never yours,
Thief, you have been warned, beware
Of finding more than treasure there.
Well! Guess he wasn’t going to be “borrowing” from Gringotts anytime soon; they took that stuff seriously-
His thoughts were cut off as the silver doors opened, revealing two of what Hagrid had called “Goblins” in full armour and carrying long spears. Yeah, Harry wasn’t planning on stealing anything here.
Hagrid nodded at the goblins as he went by, and Harry followed his lead while also trying not to stare. Staring never went well where people were concerned, and these people had weapons, so Harry was inclined to be extra cautious.
***
A quick conversation with a Goblin teller and Harry was led away from Hagrid, who needed to collect “who-know-what in vault you-know-which,” which Harry would definitely be trying to get a look at later. Hagrid had handed over the vault key for Harry, he said that he wasn’t sure how long it would be and that Harry should get some proper clothes for himself if Hagrid took too long.
The goblin, Griphook, led Harry down a short corridor ending in front of a metallic cart on a set of tracks. Harry looked at the twisting tunnel ahead with a sinking feeling.
The ride down the tracks was as horrible as he had expected. Harry had never liked fast rides, and Griphook’s malicious grin reminded Harry of students laughing when the swotty teacher’s pet got in trouble.
The grin only got wider as they rocketed around hairpin turns and across crevasses that made Harry clap a hand over his mouth or else lose his breakfast.
Finally, the two arrived in front of a large metal door, solid iron with interlocking pieces acting as an overly complex lock. Harry thought about asking Griphook about the different currencies and if goblins had a different currency, but decided against it as his stomach gave another small lurch. Clearly, he still needed some time to recover after that cart ride.
Harry pulled out the key to his vault and fit it into the large keyhole, and with a satisfying clunk, the key turned sideways. A flurry of movement began on the door, the pieces that seemed to technically fit together to make the lock but also moved independently of each other; spun, twisted and clicked until the vault door swung open.
Harrys’ eyes widened.
There was more gold in this vault than he could imagine, although he still wasn’t sure how much each was worth, so he turned to Griphook, who was still sneering meanly just to his side. Harry didn’t trust him, so he wasn’t turning his back to him.
“How much is this worth in… non-magical money?” Harry didn’t know the term for someone non-magical, although Hagrid had said Muggle quite a few times during his argument with the Dursleys. He’d wanted to ask Hagrid earlier what it meant, but all the excitement yesterday and the rush they had getting into the alley didn’t leave an opportunity for many questions.
Griphook sneered further before responding, “A knut is worth 1 penny, a sickle is worth 29 knuts and therefore 29 pence, and a galleon is worth 493 knuts, or 17 sickles and therefore 4.93 pounds sterling.”
Harry didn’t take too much offence at the condescending tone. Griphook couldn’t possibly know that Harry had a great excuse for not knowing how his money worked, namely that Harry never knew it existed before right now.
“Do you know how much is in my vault?”
At that, Griphook looked positively offended, “Why of course! Which bank do you think you’re at? This vault contains 161,290 galleons, 60,743 sickles and 39,467 knuts.”
Harry attempted some mental arithmetic, he’d always been good at math, but those numbers were so large that he wasn’t getting anywhere with it and just hoped that Griphook wouldn’t get any worse from more questions.
“Um, how much is that in pence and pounds?”
Griphook’s eyes widened slightly, and his response was slightly less condescending. “That is approximately 813,169 pounds sterling and 84 pence.”
That’s a lot! Harry had this much just stored away here?
Wait… how was he supposed to carry it anywhere? He hadn’t been able to see any prices of stuff in the Alley since he was surrounded by a crowd, but Harry reasoned that it must either be low enough that carrying around not much would be enough or that practitioners of wizardry had some way of carrying it all around easily.
Might as well ask at this point, Harry thought, turning again to Griphook “Is there any way to carry money around easily?”
“Most wixen have a Gringotts bag that summons coins directly from their vault as needed.”
Wixen? Must be the word for people who can do “witchcraft and wizardry,”
“Oh, ok, how can I get one?”
“Gringotts sells them for 5 galleons each.”
“Sounds good, thank you! I guess we can go back now? Or do I need to go somewhere else to buy a bag?”
Griphook made his way to the cart, calling over his shoulder, “I shall sell you one when we return to my counter.”
***
Exiting the massive Gringotts door, one Gringotts bag in hand was a thrilling feeling for Harry. He’d never had spending money before, and he couldn’t wait to find everything he could about this new world!